History //

MRN History

The Mind Research Network (MRN) is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness and brain injury.

Headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, MRN consists of an interdisciplinary association of scientists located at universities, national laboratories and research centers around the world and is focused on imaging technology and its emergence as an integral element of neuroscience investigation.

With an extended community of academicians, researchers, graduate students and technicians, the MRN is uniquely positioned with its national infrastructure to link the brightest minds in neuroscience with some of the most cutting-edge neuroimaging capabilities in the world today.

Founded in 1998, the MRN’s initial plan called for the building of state-of-the-art magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetoencephalogram (MEG) neuroimaging systems to be applied to studies of mental illness. This important task was carried out by Mind’s initial collaborators: Massachusetts General Hospital’s Martinos Biomedical Imaging Center (Harvard and MIT), the University of Minnesota, the University of New Mexico, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Since both the Network and the mission have expanded beyond building neuroimaging tools, a comprehensive understanding of mental illness and more fundamental and systematic understanding of the brain, is possible.

In 2011, MRN partnered with Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuqerque. Both are non-profit research companies headquartered in Albuquerque NM and known for specific studies and research on the brain and respiratory health.

The MRN Partnership
The sites that make up the MRN offer impressive resources for performing neuroimaging research. In New Mexico, a strength is the flagship college of NM, the University of New Mexico, which is a strong academic and research partner. Many of the senior staff at the MRN also are tenured or tenure-track faculty at UNM. UNM also supports the Biomedical Research and Integrative Neuroscience (BRaIN) Center, which provides facilities for performing translational research studies that are impossible in most settings. Another strength of New Mexico is the national laboratories, including Sandia and Los Alamos. These two facilities offer tremendous resources in engineering and computational facilities and expertise.

Outside of New Mexico, the National Mind Research Network is equally strong. FMRI methodology was developed and introduced by independent and concurrent efforts at the University of Minnesota (CMRR) and the Massachusetts General Hospital NMR Center. These two centers continue to lead the evolution and applications of MRI methodology. The MRN has also benefited from their significance expertise in MEG and other imaging technologies.